STARTING AT THE END (via Political Theory):

REVIEW: of Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? by Michael Ruse (Manuel Bremer, Mar 25th 2004, Metapsychology)

Michael Ruse's Darwin and Design is the third book in his trilogy on evolution, the first being Monad and Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, the second being Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? All three books are written for a non-specialist audience and all three try to place evolutionary thought and the debate around evolution into the wider cultural climate of the times. In Darwin and Design Ruse takes on the relation between the theory of evolution and the argument from design as one of the classical ways to prove that there has to be a God. Aiming at the non-specialist the debate is not developed systematically or presented in formal clothing, but enfolds as Ruse leads us through the history of the argument from design and the unfolding of Darwinism and the theory of evolution. Ruse starts with the versions of the argument from design in Plato and Aristotle, distinguishes between a realistic reading of it (i.e. there really is design by God) and Kant's methodological reading of it (i.e. we have to see the world as if it was designed to formulate the laws of biology), and sees the argument from design in British natural theology employed as a justification of science: If the laws of nature are God's design, then it cannot be against faith to do science (as a means to understand God's ways).

The teleological language used in the argument from design is congenial to the language of functions in biology, it seems. The function/telos of the eye is to see, the function of the heart to circulate blood -- and so on. Darwin himself often writes in a teleological fashion. One of his favorite pictures of the process of evolution is the similarity to breeding, which obviously involves the farmer planning his breed. So the question is: What keeps Darwin's (and other evolutionist's) usage of functional or teleological expression distinct from the cosmological view of the argument from design?

Ruse is not very explicit about the formal structure of the argument from design, but introduces an important distinction between the two major steps in that argument. The first premise of the argument Ruse calls "the argument to (organized) complexity". This is a premise won by observation. We see around us highly complex living systems. Once we look into the details of the working of the human eye or the metamorphosis of a butterfly we see what immensely structured entities or processes we encounter. Given this complexity the decisive step, according to Ruse, is the "argument to design", namely that the observed complexity is design. Ruse takes the name "argument from design" a misnomer, since it is tautological that design requires somebody doing the designing. The crucial step, therefore, rather is that complexity is taken as design. This step involves two sub-steps, it seems. The first sub-step underlines that complexity is something to be explained. Complexity is not random. Explained such this sub-step trades on the definition of "complexity", and seems to be unproblematic. Scientists, naturalists, and religious people agree on the need to explain the occurrence of organized complexity in nature. The decisive second sub-step in the argument to design is the statement that nothing but design explains complexity. It is a negative claim arguing to design as the only/best explanation. It is here that Darwin and the theory of evolution enter, and it is here where the argument from design crumbles. What the theory of mutation ("inherited variation" in Darwin's first version of his theory) and selection provides is exactly some such explanation of complexity as adaptation to a (complex) environment. Since there is the interplay of (random) mutation and selection (of better adaptive traits), there is a mechanism -- even an "algorithm" the workings of which can be ascertained ex post -- to increase complexity, to get "design" out of chaos.

One can only assume this is a parody, particularly at the point where Mr. Bremer is arguing that the existence of algorithm leading to complexity is an argument against design, rather than in favor.

But as a general proposition, Darwinism can't help but be teleological because it is historical. It attempts to explain how we got to this precise point in the history of Evolution. As the great Darwinist Ernst Mayr puts it:

[D]arwin introduced historicity into science. Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science - the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.

Darwinism then, by definition, starts from the telos (the end) and then argues backwards to find a way it could have occurred randomly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 27, 2004 3:39 PM